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The Supreme Court has reserved order on the initial objection raised by the Central Government regarding the documents presented by the petitioners stating they cannot be replied upon by the Court as they are “privileged” documents in the Rafale deal.
The arguments were opened by the Attorney General who stated that the documents are privileged and protected under the Official Secrets Act and thus, cannot be considered as evidence according to Section 123 under the Indian Evidence Act. It was also stated that according to the Section 8(1)(a) of the Right to Information Act, the documents are exempted from disclosure.
Section 22 of the RTI Act overrides the effect of the Official Secrets Act, stated Justice K M Joseph. Section 24 of the RTI Act was also referred to stating that even security and intelligence establishments are not exempted form disclosing information relating to corruption and human rights violation.
Prashant Bhushan, one of the petitioners, countered the submissions of AG by saying that claim of privilege cannot be made over documents which are already in public domain. He highlighted that Section 123 Indian Evidence Act only protected "unpublished documents".
The submissions of the AG were countered by Prashant Bhushan, one of the petitioners claiming privilege cannot be made over documents which are already a part of the public domain and only “unpublished documents” are protected by Section 123 of the Indian Evidence Act.
The petitioner also stated that Section 15 of the Press Council of India Act protects sources of journalistic privileges. The “Pentagon Papers Case” of US SC, which allowed the publication of documents though they were related to the Vietnam War, was referred. The orders passed by the SC in 2G & Coal block cases were referred, whereby the visitors book registers of former CBI director Ranjit Sinha were accepted in evidence without insisting on revealing how they were obtained.
"The concern of the government is not to protect national security, but to protect the government officials who interfered with the negotiations in the deal", he said.
Arun Shourie, another petitioner thanked the AG for admitting that the documents were genuine by stating that they were photocopies.
Review petitions were filed by Prashant Bhushan, Arun Shourie and Yashwant Sinha against the December 14 judgement. Correction petitions were filed by the Central Government along with the review petitions. Petition was also filed for initiating perjury proceedings against officials who had allegedly mislead the Court by submitting false information in the notes submitted to the Court.
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